Blogger charged $2.5 million for not being a journalist

We get used to threats of court action from companies too bitter to take an opinion; but this case has certainly sent a scary message out to us and the rest of the blogosphere. A U.S. District Court Judge has ordered a blogger to pay the sum of $2.5 million to an investment firm she was writing about, because in the eyes of the law she isn't a real journalist.

Bloggers never look attractive like the lifestyle shot we got for this (above).

Crystal Cox - owner of several blogs, received this ruling from Judge Marco A. Hernandez because she wasn't “affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system,” meaning she didn't have the same protection journalists are entitled to.

The Obsidian Finance Group had originally sued her for $10 million for several blog posts that use defamatory, critical language against their company and its co-founder Kevin padrick. Most of these blog posts were thrown out of the court as quickly as they arrived, except for one (which you can read here). This post was more factual in content in comparison to other posts, which Cox said was because information was being gathered from an inside source, who she refused to break anonymity of.

Without these tip-offs having a credited source, there was no way for the Judge to determine their authenticity, which made Cox void of Oregon's Media Shield Law. This being because she wasn't employed by a media establishment, establishing her as a blogger and not a journalist...which as you can tell from the title is a pretty pricey definition of a person.

It's a pretty frightening back track to the question: can bloggers journalists?

Judge orders divorcing couple to share Facebook passwords

Most divorce cases usually end in the sharing of tangible property: the contrived arguments over who has rightful ownership of what, digging through the obligatory fact that everything is shared to land on a conclusion of individual items. But this is probably the first time where a court case has resulted in the two sides being ordered to share their Facebook passwords.

Twitter gets a convicted man off Death Row

"Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken... We each define the great line." This is the Underoath-influenced tweet that a juror made during a case, which may result in a convicted murderer escaping death row, since the communication caused the Supreme Court to overturn the decision.

Badoo, like Facebook but for sex, has 130 million users

Sign up for an account and make sure you get tested regularly, as Badoo crosses 130 million worldwide users (1 million in the UK) to become the fourth largest social network on the planet.

This isn't a network of rekindling friendships with people from your past and interacting with those who share similar interests. Instead, we have a network based entirely on generating all new friendships with people. As the enticing line of promotional copy says: "Boost your social life. Chat, flirt, meet up and have fun!"

Father tries to sell son on Facebook for £13 million

This must have come as quite the shock for the son of father and failed businessman Saud bin Nasser Al Shahry from Saudi Arabia, as he found himself on sale for £13 million on Facebook.

The dad claims he was financially stretched, as the local court ruled his debt-collecting firm illegal. He asked for financial help and was denied because of being over the age of 35. After all of this, for the sake of taking care of his wife and daughter, he claimed the only option was to auction his son on the social network, to offer “a decent life to his mother and sister rather than living in poverty.”

And we also know, as the BBC reports, that Twitter isn't such a fan of this integration by Google, going so far as to say it is a "bad day for the internet." These comments have been made for the public facing reason of Twitter being a source of real-time information, which should be there for the user who wants the most relevant and up-to-date content. The more behind-the-scenes reasoning probably relates to their network not taking any precedence on the search, due to their partnership with Google ending quite a while ago.

Social networking strops aside, points have been made on both sides, and it's why I think Google's expanded social search isn't the best idea they've come up with, for both non-users and users of Google+. It's not going to benefit the people because it contradicts the foundation of such an impactful product as search. It does this in two ways.